The living room is one of the rooms that people spend most of their awake time at home in, so making it a beautiful room that you can enjoy being in is a good idea. DIYers are always looking for new ideas for their homes, and these projects do not need to break the bank. If you are thinking about new ways to give your living room a new look,
Here is our list of DIY projects that you can use to transform your living space.
1. Add Shapes or Patterns to the Walls
If you want to give your walls a little pop of something different without repainting or getting wallpaper, a fun DIY project is to add some shapes to the walls yourself. There are a couple of ways that you can do this. The first is to create an effect similar to wallpaper by picking a paint sponge and dipping it in paint, then applying it evenly to the walls. You will need to be careful to make sure it all stays even and level, but this can be done pretty quickly and easily.
The other way that you can do this is by getting stencils and painting either by hand or with spray paint new shapes onto the walls. If you want it to look similar to wallpaper, you can do this; you just need to be careful to keep everything even and level here too.
2. Create a Blanket Ladder
If you have too many blankets in your living room, one fun way to organize them is to create a DIY blanket ladder. You can buy a wooden or metal ladder, depending on the aesthetic of your living room, and then you just need a place to put it, and you can fold up your blankets to hang on each rung.
This gets them out of the way and gives you a unique new feature to add to your living room. If you want to make it a little more colorful, you can always add a coat of paint to it to either make it fit in or stand out with the rest of the décor in your living room.
3. Stacked Crate Bookshelf
If your home has rustic vibes, then you might want something a little more unique for your bookshelf. You can take some wooden crates and nail them together to turn them into an old, stacked crate bookshelf. For a more boho look, you can paint each crate a different color before you put them together. A crate is bigger than your standard bookshelf, so you should be able to fit some of your oversized books or any decor that is just too tall for your current shelving.
4. Add Something Green
One great way to change your living room decor is by adding some plants to the room. You can add a potted plant to a coffee table or end table, fill an empty corner of the room with a hanging plant, or just add vases of fresh flowers throughout the room. If you are not good at caring for plants, you can find some fake plants that look realistic instead.
5. Create a Faux Stone Accent Wall
Accent walls are great conversation starters, and they are intended to draw the eye to something interesting in the room. If you love the look of stone or brick but have avoided it because of its costs, you can instead install faux stone for a living room accent wall. These types of projects are easy to complete because you just need to screw the panels into your existing wall.
If you have a fireplace, you can use the faux stone to create a new surround for it or even turn the entire wall the fireplace is on into an accent wall. For those DIYers who have always wanted to have a fireplace but do not have one, you can use a linear heater that looks like a fireplace instead and surround it with faux stone. It will stand out and wow visitors.
6. Create a Frame Wall
Gallery walls are a common way to liven up your living spaces, but if you do not like the look of filling a wall with art or photos, you can instead create a frame wall. To create a frame wall, you just need to hang picture frames of different sizes and shapes, then paint over the frames and the wall, making it all one uniform color.
This will add some unique textures to the wall that you can be proud to show off. It is a perfect DIY project for someone who wants a minimalist living room with a little bit of character. If you buy your frames from thrift stores and antique stores, you can save a little bit of money and get more diversity in the frame shapes.
7. Drawer Shelves
If you have some random drawers that are not in use, you can turn them into beautiful and unique shelves to hang in your living room. All you need to do is hang them on your walls, but you can give the wood a coat of paint or refinish it first. If you want to make them really stand out, you can add some contact paper or wrapping paper to the interior of the drawers before hanging them.
8. Painted Vases
If you want to make some clear vases stand out, you can paint them to give them a retro finish. You just need to paint the interior of the vase with an enamel coating paint so that it will look like it is naturally part of the vase from the outside. To prevent paint from pooling in the bottom of the vase, you can put it upside down on a paper towel until it dries out. You can get cheap vases from the Dollar Store, so this is a low-cost project.
9. Declutter and Rearrange Your Living Room
One easy way to give your living room a fresh new look is to declutter the room and rearrange your furniture. Spend some time purging the room of any clutter, removing old knick-knacks and decor items that do not fit with your new vision for the room, and moving around your furniture. You can completely transform your living room without spending a cent.
About the Author
Auz Burger is a freelance writer and an expert in faux stone and brick veneer and home DIY projects. She has a BA from Washington State University and has been writing and editing professionally for over a decade.
